January 2021

Pensions Imperilled: The Political Economy of Private Pensions Provision in the UK

By Craig Berry Private pensions provision in the UK is in crisis, yet it is not the crisis often depicted in political and popular discourses. While population ageing has affected traditional pensions practice, the imperilment of UK pensions is due in fact to the peculiar way policy-makers have responded to wider social and economic change. Pensions are a mechanism for managing failed futures, yet this function is being impeded by the individualization of provision. This book offers a political economy...

January 2021

Privatizing Social Security

By Martin Feldstein This volume represents the most important work to date on one of the pressing policy issues of the moment: the privatization of social security. Although social security is facing enormous fiscal pressure in the face of an aging population, there has been relatively little published on the fundamentals of essential reform through privatization. Privatizing Social Security fills this void by studying the methods and problems involved in shifting from the current system to one based on mandatory...

Retirement Savings in Mena

By Gustavo Demarco Public pensions are important in MENA, but their role as institutional investors remains uncertain in view of the sustainability problems that pension schemes are facing due to the over generosity of their promises. In addition to the gradual loss of reserves, portfolios are not very diversified and this, in turn, reveals a low level of professional management probably com bined with an absence of autonomy in the asset allocation process. An exception to this rule is the...

December 2020

A Course in Behavioral Economics

By Erik Angner A concise text that introduces students to behavioural economics by comparing and contrasting its theories and models with those of mainstream economics. Full of examples, exercises and problems to engage students and encourage learning and understanding. Get the book here

Depopulation, Aging, and Living Environments: Learning from Social Capital and Mountainous Areas in Japan (Advances in Geographical and Environmental Sciences)

By Kenji Tsutsumi This book provides perspectives on depopulated areas and regional social capital from positivistic field surveys. Among the developed countries of the world, Japan has a very small amount of national land, with almost 70% of it being in mountainous locations. Concentration of populations and economic capital into large metropolitan areas along with many depopulated and population-aged regions in the mountainous parts can be seen in the country. A very clear regional disparity has arisen in Japan, especially...

Population Change and Public Policy

By Billystrom Jivetti, Md. Nazrul Hoque This book provides a solid empirical portrait based on the complexities of demographic components of population change. It describes recent innovations, trends, challenges and solutions to population change and public policy issues, such as but not limited to immigration, gender discrimination in the labor market, student housing, teen pregnancy programs, smoking and alcohol consumption, and environment and self-rated health. As such it provides an interesting platform for academics, researchers, policy makers, and...

2020 OECD Pensions Outlook

From OECD The OECD Pensions Outlook provides an analysis of different pension policy issues in OECD countries covering both public and private, defined benefit and defined contribution, pay-as-you-go and funded retirement provisions. Prepared against the background of the COVID-19 pandemic, the 2020 edition discusses policy guidelines to help governments strengthen the resilience of their retirement savings and old-age pension systems. Get the book Here!

Financial Circuit

By Dr. Anurag Kumar Jha This book is a kind of roadmap which shows the path of financial inclusion. Although several works have been done on the present topic but its uniqueness lies on the fact that it connects digital India to become Atma Nirbhar Bharat. It is a kind of journey where every kind of people either rich or poor can be located digitally and financially. How individual and businesses have access to useful and affordable financial product...

Good Economics for Hard Times

By Abhijit V Banerjee, Esther Duflo The winners of the Nobel Prize show how economics, when done right, can help us solve the thorniest social and political problems of our day. Figuring out how to deal with today's critical economic problems is perhaps the great challenge of our time. Much greater than space travel or perhaps even the next revolutionary medical breakthrough, what is at stake is the whole idea of the good life as we have known...

November 2020

Fintechs and Financial Inclusion. Looking past the hype and exploring their potential

By Gayatri Murthy, Maria Fernandez-Vidal, Xavier Faz, and Ruben Barreto (CGAP) Fintech companies combine technology with access to data to deliver new financial services and experiences to customers. They have been proliferating in emerging markets and developing economies (EMDEs), and some are creating solutions specifically for underserved, low-income, or remote customers. Yet for all the general excitement that fintechs have generated in the global development community, there is little information available about how specific fintech innovations solve pain points in...